1. Field of the Invention
Apparatuses and methods consistent with the present general inventive concept relate to an image forming apparatus and a control method thereof, and more particularly to an image forming apparatus provided with a cartridge having a status indicating element and a control method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus forms an image onto a recording medium based on print data. The image forming apparatus is provided with a cartridge containing a developer to be supplied to form an image, and the cartridge needs to be replaced when it is used up.
A user may use a cheap and/or fraudulent cartridge with different properties than an authentic cartridge. Particularly, durability of a photosensitive body, a developing unit, or the like provided in an image forming unit of the image forming apparatus is designed to correspond to previously stored information about the authentic cartridge and information about the amount of developer used by the cartridge. Therefore, if the fraudulent cartridge is frequently used, the photosensitive body, the developing unit, or other components may be worn, the photosensitive body may not be cleaned or charged as needed, the developer may leak, an image may be deteriorated, and so on.
When an image is deteriorated, a user generally determines that the image forming apparatus is faulty, but the deteriorated image may be caused by use of the fraudulent cartridge.
In addition, user may remove a used cartridge from the image forming apparatus to replace it with a new one, or the user may temporarily remove a used cartridge from the image forming apparatus to fix a paper jam, clean the cartridge, or the like, and then mount the used cartridge again.
To distinguish between mounting a new cartridge and remounting a used cartridge, a conventional image forming apparatus allows a user to select whether the cartridge is new or used when the cartridge is mounted.
However, a user may mistakenly select that the cartridge is a used one even though it is a new one.
When this happens, the image forming apparatus controls the new cartridge based on the previously stored information about the amount of a used developer in the used cartridge, so that the image forming apparatus determines that the remaining amount of the developer is insufficient even though there is no lack of the developer. Therefore, problems may arise, including abnormally forming an image, prematurely requesting a replacement cartridge, and so on.